Valley 1:Pre-Beta Release Notes

Alpha 0.412

(Note: this prerelease is not available yet, we're still working on it)

• Strategy/City: Fixed some bugs where npc's in the same region as the settlement but a different chunk (like down in some caves near a neutral Ilari) could be considered as eligible for listing on the npc list for these screens and causing all matter of confusing tomfoolery.

• The outfitter workbench no longer requires any gems or any gem dust -- it is now a tier-less crafting place where you can just use regular raw materials to make physical goods.
  • The recipes for all the various outfitter stuff have also thus been changed, but existing worlds are upgraded to grant the first row of all the outfitter stuff.
  • Outfitter is now based around the following base materials instead of dust:
    • Cedar Logs (available at the start)
    • Granite (available at the start)
    • Quartz Rock (available at civ level 2)
    • Copper Ore (available at civ level 5)
    • Iron Ore (available at civ level 10)
    • Coral (available at civ level 70)

• This change to the outfitter makes wood platforms super plentiful for players that want that, makes moon lamps actually attractive to build, and delays the time at which you can craft bear traps, but then makes them more attractive when they arrive.

Alpha 0.411

(Released September 16th, 2011)

Important: for anyone who downloaded versions 0.409 or 0.410, you will have to download the following file manually and unzip it into your game folder: http://avww.s3.amazonaws.com/AVWW411.zip

For anyone on 0.408 or prior, updating as normal should work. After a dalliance with the Rackspace CDN, it's clear that's not suitable for serving files that change frequently. Therefore, we've moved to Amazon S3 again, which we've used in the past but had some annoyances with on the internal side. But this should now be robust enough for the upcoming beta in terms of bandwidth, as well as getting our updates in a timely manner. Rackspace still has 3 days to go at this point before their servers will update our file, which is why the 0.409 and 0.410 folks have to download this manually.

Alpha 0.410

(Released September 15th, 2011)

• Fixed bug where chat log messages were taking mouseovers and generating tooltips if your cursor was over where the message would have been drawn if the chat log box were taller.

• Added "World Event Log" button to the escape menu, it opens the new WorldEventLogSummaryWindow which displays one line for each of the actual world events (not all chat messages qualify; these are things the game actually remembers and can do stuff like NPC morale modifiers based on), and allows paging once you get over the max it displays at once.

• Fixed a null exception that could happen on the main menu after quitting a game and moving the mouse down where the ability bar would be if you were still playing.

• Moved initial spawning of bandits in a new world from before first character selection to just after the seeding of the starting profession-book windfall.

• Underground gem veins are now vastly more common; there are now six in each underground dungeon, rather than one. That also means that there are tons more bosses underground, too. Navigating these caverns is a lot more tricky and interesting now!

• The F1 key, which lets you switch the first mouse button's position along the ability bar, is kind of confusing. Handy for players that want it, but now that ability is unbound by default (and updated to have that unbound on all existing configurations).

• The old "world map wait" option is now removed, since it was pointless since the windstorm mechanics changed.

• "Look ahead" is now bound to T instead of shift, to avoid issues with the steam client overlay later if the game goes to steam.

• The player no longer makes footstep sounds while transmogrified into the bat.

• There is now a "walk" button, which is bound to left ctrl by default, and which lets your character move at 1/4 their normal speed while that is held down.

• Fixed a bug from the last version where using the "Abandon character" function would cause your character to use a healing spell/potion to avoid their fate. Oops!

• Tweaked the ball lightning visuals so that it's no longer so oversized.

• Added in a new Forest Rage spell.
  • Offensive spell that thin, fast, and hits a single target for nontrivial damage.

• Added in a new Creeping Death spell.
  • Offensive spell that very slow, but very powerful, dealing massive damage to each enemy OR ALLY it passes before it ends.

• None of the offensive player spells except the creeping death are now able to hit NPCs.
  • This still gives players an option to kill NPCs, but it prevents the need for any sort of "friendly fire" option. And prevents accidental NPC death from just messing around with spells in the starting settlement.
  • Later when we get into some PVP options, we'll make some sort of special something that players can craft to be able to target other players and be targeted by them. It might be an enchant, we'll see.

• RegionDetailWindow: now when showing a group of rampaging monsters that has demands, it shows the icon, quantity, and name of each resource demanded.

• RegionDetailWindow now hides the menu buttons on the strategy map (end turn, close, to-city-map) since there's overlap problems on an 800-wide resolution.

• Strategy map: you can now order an NPC to "pay off" rampaging monsters who are demanding something (so vengeful ghosts can't be paid off). Their price is named when they're created, and you can see it by mousing over them on the strategy map (it's at the top) if you've scouted that region, or you can see it by right clicking their region and looking at the region detail. Once you've paid the price the group will disappear and the people in the former-target settlement will get a 5% morale boost for 5 turns (which is pretty small).
  • The price is reduced by 25% if you order an NPC with the new "Diplomatic" trait to perform the task (traits are listed on the little info card next to their portrait on the strategy map).

• Destroying a group of rampaging monsters now also creates a record in the world event log and gives the people in the former-target settlement a 20% morale boost for 10 turns (which is pretty good).
  • Note that for both the pay-off and destroy event log entries it's using a new "leader name" field on the group records that didn't exist prior to this version, so if you do either to a group spawned in a previous version you may see some entries where no name is given where the leader name should be.

• The vengeful ghosts now leave trails of poisonous miasma in their wake.

• Strategy/City: Fixed a few bugs that were causing the game profound confusion about which npcs it should be allowing the player to use in a given settlement.

• The quantities of spell scrolls that you get for each gem dust have been increased dramatically, making them much more attractive as targets to craft.

• Added a new spellscroll: decoy fireworks.
  • Single-use magic scroll that summons a small fireworks display to distract enemies; enemies will attack the fireworks as well as you until the fireworks are destroyed.
  • Not only is this useful as a decoy, but it also blocks incoming enemy shots at the moment. This may need some tweaking.
  • Also, this makes it so that there is at least one spell scroll per gem dust color, which is nice.

• Strategy: NPC scouting can now only be performed on a region adjacent to an already scouted region. If their own region has not already been scouted they can always scout that one.
  • This now gives some motivation for "manual" scouting (running out there yourself and entering all the surface chunks) as that can be used to open a new "pocket" anywhere that your npc scouts can then widen.
  • This also motivates finding other settlements, as the npcs in a new settlement can explore their own region and then any npc can expand that pocket.

• Fixed a bug that could cause crashes in old saves with retorts in them.

• Fixed a bug where wind shelters that were built by NPCs could not be properly entered when the player tried to then visit the region for the first time.

Alpha 0.409

(Released September 15th, 2011)

• Adjusted the tech book unlock system to no longer include retorts anywhere in the process.
  • Now when you use a tech book near a guardian stone, it gives you four options that are actually randomized (before, the randomization wasn't in). Each guardian stone that you talk to gives you a different selection of four, so you can shop around if you really want to.
  • When you use a tech book near a guardian stone, that tech book is not consumed unless you actually complete the transaction and make a recipe. Additionally, you don't get the EXP until that point, either.
  • The retorts had originally been implemented to make this process multiplayer-safe and to prevent players from re-rolling the random recipes at a specific guardian stone. However, we've solved that a different way now that is transparent to the player (it uses the guardian stone's entity ID as a random seed, making it deterministic per guardian stone).

• Fixed bug where SettingsMenu and InputBindingsMenu were not closing when you pressed escape.

• The emit light scroll now lasts for 10 minutes by default, with an extra 30 seconds per tier of scroll.
  • Also, crafting them now gives you 20 per dust, rather than 10. Thus even at level 1, you'd have no reason to spend more than 1 gem dust on them per 200 minutes of gametime on average, deaths not withstanding.

• Now X and I can both be used to open your inventory; that way the obvious "I" key is mapped, but at the same time there is an option on the bottom row with all the other inventories (and it's easier to hit X while playing, too). All of the existing mappings for this keybind have been reset.

• Light sources no longer show on the minimap, as that was relatively pointless and had the potential to obscure other stuff.

• Monster nests now show up as purple on the minimap, and at a larger size, so that they are easier to see.

• Made the light loot drops easier to see on the minimap.

• Put in a fix to the ability bar still being able to trigger the first spell attack when the player dragged the item off the bar and released the mouse button.

• The various HUD maps now all hide themselves when other windows are up, to prevent any sort of overlap.

• Added in numbers above the ability bar slots to denote which numeral each corresponds to. This makes it far easier to use abilities via the number keys.

• Four new room templates have been added.

• A variety of visual effects were not properly showing up when the game was paused, including things like the light emissions going out. Fixed.

• Rampaging Monster groups will now seek the nearest settlement in a region that a player has entered, rather than always seeking 0,0.

• Changed the periodic rampaging monster spawns to only target settlements in regions a player has entered, rather than including all settlements in regions the player has ever seen.

• Fixed a bug where killing a microboss in a settlement would generate a prevented-vengeful-ghost message.

• There is no longer a limit as to how close you have to be to the target location in order to deploy an item there (like a trap, or a wood platform).

• Added a new "Douse Monster Nest" spell that can be crafted:
  • Creates a magical aura that prevents nearby monster nests of an equal or lower level from spawning any monsters for the next minute.
  • The level of the aura will be your level or 5x the tier of the spellgem, whichever is lower.

• Drastically changed the formulae for how monster and character health/magic are calculated.
  • The biggest effect is to make the differentials of unique character and boss stats a lot more noticeable. Choosing characters just got a lot more interesting.
  • The second effect is to make it so that many fewer enemies die in one hit now.

• Player spell balance changes:
  • The ice cross spell has had its power increased 6x, and its MP cost halved.
  • The fire touch spell has had its power increased 5x, actually making it more powerful than the fireball; having to get in close is enough of a penalty with this one.
  • The circle of fire spell has had its power increased 10x, and its cost reduced to 3/4 its former value.
  • The ball lightning spell has had its power increased 3x, and it's cost increased 50%.
  • The light snake spell has had its cost reduced 3x.
  • The energy pulse spell has had its power increaed 10x, and its cost increased 50%.
  • The launch rock spell has had its cost increased 2x, and its power increased 4x.
  • The tidal pulse spell has had its cost doubled, and its power increased 8x.

• If players are carrying a heal scroll or healing potion and die, a heal scroll or potion will be automatically applied to keep them from dying.
  • These are applied instantly and without requiring any recharge time.

• Magic potions and health potions (and their scroll counterparts) now have a recharge time of .66 seconds instead of 4 seconds when used manually.
  • Also, their base effectiveness has gone up about 8x.

• The attack power of the espers and amoebas (giant and regular) have been increased 3x to counterbalance the larger amount of health that players now have.
  • The physical attack of the rhinos, skelebots, and the desert burrowers have also been increased 3x.
  • The physical attack of the bats has gone up 6x.
  • The physical and magical attack of the skelebot giant has been increased 3x.
  • The skelebot sniper and dwarf have been left untouched for now, but the max movement speed of the skelebot dwarf has gone up by 2x.
  • The health of vengeful ghosts has been thirded under the new formula, making it still fairly equivalent to what it used to be. The attack power of the vengeful ghosts has been roughly doubled, so that they are more likely to one-hit kill you.

Alpha 0.408

(Released September 14th, 2011)

• City map: added a duplicate of the strategic End Turn button, tooltip and all.

• City: added new structure type "Grave Plot", costs 1 granite (and that might actually be its real cost, it's just placeholder for everything else), takes up 1 tile.
  • New settlements will get a 10x10 area seeded with these. Hey, we thought you'd probably die a lot.

• Now when an player character or settlement NPC dies it replaces a random grave plot in that settlement (uses your last visited one in the case of the player) with a grave with that character's name on it. If no plots are available it picks a random tile (tending towards the center of the grid) and puts the grave there.

• Fixed a bug where a character dying in a settlement would not only not become a vengeful ghost but not generate the "has died" world event log entry that would be used to apply a morale penalty for the next 10 turns.

• The first tier of crafting recipes are no longer automatically granted in new worlds for anything except the three basic crafting disciplines of outfitter, spellgem, and spellscroll.

• This doesn't apply to existing buildings in existing worlds, but for all new buildings in new or existing worlds, the layouts generated will not grow as large as they used to be. Most of the smaller homes, etc, are the same as they were. But the various ginormous buildings are no longer remotely so large, as it simply didn't contribute anything to fun but did make the maps very hard to see, even on large monitors.

• Strategy/City: now if you click End Turn on either interface and a rampaging monster group is 1 region away from one of the settlements you've seen, it will prompt you to confirm with a fairly ominous message explaining what could happen, that you can actually just fight them in the wilderness, and the coordinates to find them at. If we ever implement cruise missiles we'll probably add GPS coordinates to this (kidding).

• Now when rampaging monsters are on the map and heading towards a settlement (in strategic time, that is) the npcs in that settlement have dialog to talk about it.

• When there are no more recipes to unlock in a world, it no longer creates a retort, but instead tells you a message saying that it can't create anymore yet because you already know everything so far.

• The profession books that are found in libraries and home studies are now limited to just those where there are actually more recipes for you to unlock, as well as those whose workbenches have become available based on the civilization level.

• Strategy: new bandits now periodically spawn to advance on a settlement you've seen. The frequency varies by strategic difficulty level and is currently 20/12/6/3/1 for difficulty 1/2/3/4/5, respectively.
  • Note that while they can spawn near other settlements, they're still hardwired to advance on the settlement at 0,0. That's to be fixed soon.

• The join multiplayer game main menu button is really disabled for real this time.

• When you stay in trial mode instead of entering your key immediately, it now works substantially smoother.

• When a character is standing within about 500px of a monster spawner, it stops spewing smoke and also stops producing any monsters.

Alpha 0.407

(Released September 14th, 2011)

• Fixed up the way that gravity works when you're standing on a slope so that you don't bounce down the slope.

• Moved the settings and achievements out of being in a sub-menu of the escape menu, out onto the main escape menu display itself. It was too many clicks to get to the settings.

• Moved around the character and chunk stats windows in the escape menu; they now show to the right of the escape menu itself, which blocks more of the view but frees up vertical space on the menu as well as looking generally cleaner.

• Fixed the minor visual issue with the main menu showing in the upper left corner behind the loading screen on compiled versions of the game.

• Fixed up the "Saved Entire World File..." message so that it only shows at most every 10 seconds as you open and close the escape menu.

• Put in a new function, by default bound to tilde/backquote, which lets players show all of the log of recent chat/informational messages that have come in at the top right of the screen, in an expanded view of that panel.
  • The last 200 messages are now kept, instead of the last 100.

• Fixed the text being slightly cut off in the message log in the upper left.

• Added in a new pause function, by default bound to both the P and Pause buttons.
  • In multiplayer, it's actually only pausing the current chunk that you are standing in; so any other players in that chunk will also have their game paused, but any players elsewhere in the world will be completely unaffected.

• Altered the default controls on the main menu to be taller, and considerably neater-looking, but at the same time working better on 800x600 screens as well.

• Made the game version text larger and easier to read against light backgrounds.

• When an unhandled exception occurs, the game now shows a permanent message at the top of the screen until the game is restarted; this being important because other errors that aren't really errors are likely to occur until the game is restarted, since any error throws the game into an unstable state.

• Put in a fair bit more advice, and more early-game advice front-loaded, in the adviser guardian's dialogue.

• Added a slight white/black pulsing shimmer around your character, to help tell them apart from other players and NPCs.
  • Also, your character is now a lot less dimmed by the night in surface chunks.

• The vengeful ghosts now properly bob up and down on the world map.

• All the various roaming monsters are now properly animated on the strategic map.
  • Also fixed an issue with them halting their movement for a bit when you go into their chunk, or when another player is in their chunk in multiplayer.

• Visible sky time no longer stands still while you are in the city management or strategy map interfaces, which had led to it then rapidly catching up when you left those interfaces. Now it continues to animate properly while you are in there.

• The join multiplayer server button has been temporarily removed from the compiled version of the game to prevent confusion.

• Added in Sunrise and Nightfall spells, which make it 7am and 10pm, respectively.
  • These are made out of sunstone and moonstone, the first rare commodities actually used in crafting.

• Sunstone and moonstone will now have a chance of being seeded throughout the map in rare commodity towers that get created new (as in, after exploring further in the existing world, or starting a new world).

• The "not yet unlocked" message on the crafting material tooltips now includes information what to do with profession books and generally where to find more.

• The maximum width of tooltips in the crafting interface and elsewhere is now cropped to 500px rather than the width of the screen.

• Fixed a bug that would cause fourth commodity in the crafting interfaces to not show up properly.

• Put in an efficiency improvement to the lighting model when there are a lot of light sources. It also makes things get lit more predictably gradually.

• The nighttime outdoor lighting model now works with game entities and light sources; previously there was no way to light up the nighttime darkness. That's still true of the ground and grass (and likely always will be based on how those are constructed), but for plants, objects, people, enemies, etc, the light sources now function.

• Added construction costs (icon + quantity + name for each resource) to the StructureTypeDetailWindow that pops up when mousing over an item in the structure list.

• Rare commodity dungeons that have not yet been found via exploration in the world map now get their contents updated to each new version of the game.
  • This way players get to the new stuff faster, which is going to be really important on an ongoing basis.

• The "name and MP only" tooltips on the main ability bar now also show the text "open inventory for details." This should help with new players actually finding the detailed tooltips.

• The tooltips on the inventories, crafting interface, tech unlock interface, and dungeon/region maps, are now a lot larger, to make them more easily readable more quickly.

• Fixed the bug with blank recipes in the crafting interface causing a crash if you tried to craft them.

• The region map tooltips now actually show the name of the buildings that contain the interior dungeons.

• The hanging lamps no longer block spells automatically. They are now part of the background, like other trees or whatever outside, and can be seized like the others if you want to have them block you from enemies. As it was, they were pretty much getting more in the way of players than enemies.

• The innate ambient cold and heat resistance of characters is now shown in their stats on the escape menu.

• Fixed a bug with sizing up the screen while on the main menu causing some graphical issues.

• A little square bounding box is now shown around any regions with visible strategic units, and around the region that the local character is in or moving toward. This helps makes things visually more clear as to what is in which region.

• Expanded Structure Detail Window to list resident capacity, worker capacity, production output, upgrade cost, and salvage amounts (though nothing in the list can be salvaged, only trees and there's no way to get their detail window right now).
  • Also made it hide the Close and To Strategy Map buttons while this window is showing because they could overlap it on an 800-wide resolution.

• Put in the following performance-related graphics options on the graphics settings tab:
  • Disable Static Sky Storm Clouds
  • Disable Weather Precipitation 1
  • Disable Weather Precipitation 2
  • Disable Weather Precipitation 3
  • All four of these are for squeezing every last drop of performance out of low-end graphics cards which are otherwise able to play the game just fine.

• City map: structure type list now shows the selected item in the top slot, and always displays two boxes below that even if there are no types to show in them, this makes the list always the same size.

Alpha 0.406

(Released September 13th, 2011)

• Strategy map region-tooltips / region-detail-window
  • Added icon for rampaging monster to those entries.
  • Added entries for rescuable npcs.

• Added a mouseover tooltip for the "End Turn" button because Every. Last. Being. In. The Universe. Repeatedly. Told. Us. To. (actually we planned to do it anyway)

• Strategy/City map: when opening either of these it automatically tries to select an NPC that has not yet acted this turn.

• Strategy/City map: Fixed a bug where dead npcs would still show up and be selectable, etc.

• Fixed a bug where defeating 3 ghosts would cause any future ghost creations to immediately create a rampaging group (of 1), because it was considering the dead ones eligible.

• The initial rampaging monsters group (non-ghosts) now has 4 members instead of 1.

• Fixed some bugs where the strategy map and city map were scrolling from the same input, despite only one of them actually being shown at the time.

• Fixed a bug where if a character were invincible, but would otherwise be taking damage from the cold or similar, they would still show messages about the damage even though they were not taking it.

• Fixed a bug where the region/dungeon maps could still be showing inside the strategic/citybuilding interfaces. And where they could interfere with the keyboard scrolling of the strategic/citybuilding maps, too.

• City map: Added detailed mouseover tooltip (detail window, really) for structure types in the structure list.
  • Still need to add cost data, input and output amounts, etc.

• Fixed the vengeful ghosts on the world map seeming to draw higher than the actual tile they are on, and too large.

• Hopefully fixed a bug that was causing rare commodity towers to sometimes not include a rare commodity (how rude!).
  • If any tester still sees this, please send me a world file for sure.

• Fixed it up so that knockback can no longer be applied to players who are still in their just-entered-chunk invincibility period, even if a spell hits them.

• On the region map, most buildings show up as light blue. But now evil outposts, evil overlord lairs, and rare commodity towers show up as red. Since these are buildings players would tend to be returning to a lot, and which are rare, etc.

• A message is now shown in the upper right every time EXP is gained.

• Fixed a bug where dragging items around in the ability bar was firing off the left-mouse-button ability if the cursor at all left the ability bar.

• Skelebot dwarves are now a lot smarter about running away to get their ideal striking distance.

• Fixed a threading issue with 0.405 and the crafting interface.

• Fixed a rather serious bug in 0.405 that was causing players to have a ton of trouble moving between surface chunks.

Alpha 0.405

(Released September 13th, 2011)

• Vengeful ghosts no longer spawn when characters die in settlements, in wind shelter chunks, or in any other location where an Illari is present.
  • This helps to prevent complete-sweeps of the settlement NPCs whenever one is killed or a monster arrives.
  • A message is shown in the text log letting you know that the NPC died, but was protected from "a fate worse than death" by the local Illari.

• The ride the lightning spell can now be used simply by double-jumping when it is in your ability bar. If you have multiple double-jump-activated spells in your ability bar, it will automatically use only whichever one is leftmost in the bar.

• The very first region in the game now always will spawn with only one surface chunk -- the settlement.
  • This makes it so that players have no chance of getting lost in that first region without finding the world map first, and immediately establishes the world map as the main way of getting around.

• A "Difficulty Shrine" is now seeded into each settlement, which allows you to change the action and strategic difficulties.
  • There are five options at each, with the middle option being the default on both.

• The action difficulty setting currently only affects the physical and magical attack strength of enemies. Everything else is controlled by relative region level.
  • On Featherweight, the values are 1/10th the prior value; on Apprentice, they are 1/5th the prior value; on Hero (the new default), they are 1/2th the prior value; on master hero, the values are equivalent to the prior values; on the chosen one, the values are 2x the prior value.

• There is now more buffer space between the hearth guardian stone and the edge of the settlement chunks.

• Fixed up the dropdowns so that they don't feel awkward when clicking one to close itself.

• A number of player items that sometimes could be multiple tiers -- but which never differed by tier -- are all now being properly clamped to never having any tier at all.
  • Snowsuit/heatsuit, wooden platforms, seize, shrink, transmogrify into bat, flash of light, light snake, and all commodities other than raw gems and raw gem dust.
  • This lets these items actually stack with one another regardless of what level of gem or dust you use to craft them, which is far more convenient for the player. Previously these took up extra inventory space for no reason.
  • This also prevents confusion in the crafting interface when the player would think they could craft a higher tier of something that was really identical to their current tier. Now it's clear: if it says it is a higher tier, then it is actually better in some way.

• Strategy Map: now when you right-click a region it brings up a new region detail window that displays all the info from the region-mouseover tooltip plus a much expanded explanation of each item.
  • Still need to add an icon for rampaging monster entries.
  • Still need to add the migrateable npc icon.

• The header text of the various inventories now includes text telling you to drag to organize, and in the case of usables also to right-click to use.

• Blue Sapphire Guardian Stones are now called Adviser Guardian Stones, and one of them is now always seeded in each settlement next to the difficulty shrine.

• Added 33 tips for the adviser guardian stone, all of which are sequential. These are particularly helpful for getting new players off to the right start if they have questions about the world.
  • Pressing confirm at the adviser guardian stones now cycles you through the tips of the adviser. This is something that is player-specific, and it always goes in a linear order and then loops, so it makes for a mini-tutorial for anyone who wants/needs it. It remembers what point you were last at in the tips list whenever you come back, too, so you don't have to go through it all in one run, if you go through it all at all.

• The "random tip of the day" sort of text for all of the guardian stones except for blue has been updated to include a number of new entries. These are all worded in-character for the world, and tend to be more vague. All non-blue guardian stones pick from these at random whenever you see them.

• The way that the character stats highlighting is done in the new character screen is now much different. It now shows as green if the underlying multiplier (which ranges from 1-10) is greater than 6. It shows as red if it's less than 4. Otherwise it shows as white. This should be a lot less confusing than the old system.

• Put in a fix for a missing image on some of the interior tiles. Testers: if any more pink images are seen indoors, please let us know and send a zipped world file.

• Balance:
  • The health of the vengeful ghosts has been halved.
  • The attack power of amoebas (giant and regular) has been halved, given how many shots they shoot, etc.
  • The skelebot giant has had its attack powers halved as well.
  • The health of espers has been substantially buffed, while their attack power has been halved.

• The action difficulty level is now shown in the escape menu stats for the Chunk.cs

• Players now always spawn at the difficulty shrine when they are newly created or choosing another character after their prior one died.

• Fixed one bug that could result in players getting stuck in building walls if they warped into rooms under certain conditions.

• Fixed a bug in one hallway definition that was leading to completely filled-in rooms that players would get trapped in.

Alpha 0.404

(Released September 12th, 2011)

• Fixed bug where exiting to the world map while having the inventory open (expanded) made it impossible to enter a region from the world map (now it just un-expands the inventory automatically if you switch to some view other than the standard in-chunk one).

• Fixed a few bugs where the strategy-map and city-map scrolling speed was framerate dependent.

• Drastically improved the performance of the "scouting fog" on the strategic overlay, and also made it far more obvious when on light or dark region types by making it a checkered pattern.

• Changed the logic for finding "wandering" NPCs that you can choose as your character when you die.
  • Previously, it was always just five wandering NPCs from the time period of the settlement you were currently going to spawn in. Since you often will want to spawn in the same settlement for a long period of time, that's really limiting in terms of what NPCs you could select.
  • Now, as you move around the world and meet NPCs from various time periods, you'll unlock their time period for wandering NPCS.
  • The number of wanderers you can choose from is now the number of unlocked time periods times two, but never fewer than six.
    • Thus at the start you get 6 ice-age folks to choose from, then when you meet your first NPC from another time you get 3 from each time period to choose from, and so on. Eventually when you've met folks from all 7 time periods, you get 7 wanderers to choose from, 2 from each time period.

• A warning is now shown in the character selection screen when characters will take heat or cold damage in the region you'd be spawning them in. This doesn't ever happen at the very start of the game, but if you're based out of an ice-age settlement are selecting a non-ice-age character, that is an important warning.

• Fixed a bug where the normal hud ability bar icons were still taking mouse input when on the strategy map and elsewhere.

• Changed strategic scouting so that an npc always scouts the full cross pattern (the region clicked and all 4 directly adjacent, and one further out in each direction from those if a scouting specialist, though scouting specialists don't seem to seed right now), rather than going around in a certain order and stopping at the first "interesting" result.

• Strategic Map Region Mouseover now draws:
  • Summary text (the name of the region and world coordinates like before).
  • Picture of terrain type (like before, but 16x smaller).
  • Name of terrain type.
  • Icon and name of each macrogame-location (i.e. rare commodity dungeon, settlement, evil outpost, etc) and resource deposit.
    • Does not yet do an icon for "there is an npc here that you can migrate" because we're changing that logic soon.
  • Some text about a pillaging group and the name of the leader if any (no icon on these yet, the rendering is trickier for these).

• City Map, when mousing over a cell where a click would be interpreted as issuing a "build structure" order:
  • Displays a green "placement" ghost of the selected structure type if the order would be permitted.
  • Displays a red "placement" ghost of the selected structure type if the order would hit an error.
  • If there would be an error, displays the text of that error in the task info box at the top.

• City Map structure list in the bottom-left corner:
  • Added a mouseover tooltip, but it's just the name of the structure, more needs to be added here.
  • Clicking an entry now selects it.
  • All entries are drawn at 96x96 (the largest currently in the game), smaller images are centered within that box.
  • Only draws at most 3 entries now instead of 5.
  • The upshot is that the list now stays still a lot more.

• Strategy Map: now no longer shows the rescuable-npc icon on regions where there's only a situation where an npc will be spawned if you go to the right chunk, since those were not actually rescuable before they were generated (during first entrance of a player into that chunk) anyway.

• Fixed an issue with pop-in of rotated trees during windstorms.

Alpha 0.403

(Released September 9th, 2011)

• City Map: Added Grave, Library, Warehouse, Well.
  • Graves are not placed by the game or normally buildable, but they are in the buildable list (along with trees) in the F3 debug mode.
  • None of these have their intended functions implemented yet, just graphically present, etc.
  • Added "To Strategy Map" button, and on strategy map added "To City Map" button.
    • Still intending to add "End Turn" to the city map too, but there were extra wrinkles there.

• City Map: added ability to upgrade a house by right clicking on it. Costs are still placeholder and it has no effect, but makes them visually accessible.

• Strategy map and City map:
  • Minimap is now hid while these are showing.
  • Mouse-edge-scrolling area is now much narrower.
  • City map menu buttons placed higher on screen, fixed position.
  • Structure list bottom-aligned instead of centered vertically to avoid overlapping menu buttons.

• Added in glowy, floating, "vengeful ghost" versions of all the playable characters except the neutral skelebot, which can't turn into a ghost since it is a robot.
  • These move slowly and do a fierce melee attack on the player if they reach the player. A single hit of this sort is pretty well enough to kill the player. But on the other hand, the ghosts are pretty easy to avoid because they move pretty slowly. A single ghost is probably not too much cause for alarm by itself, but thrown into the mix with other monsters or especially bosses, it can be incredibly deadly.
  • Whenever a player or NPC dies, their character turns into a vengeful ghost and stalks the area where they died until someone comes back to kill the ghost. Or until they form a tactical unit (see below).

• Bosses and vengeful ghosts now show a red blip on the minimap in the same fashion that NPCs show a green blip. Seems only fair in general, especially when dealing with ghosts or microbosses.

• Fixed up some issues with the "bob up and down" logic for things like guardian stones not centering them properly on their actual collision box.

• Fixed up the collision offset of the fire burst spell, which was offset too low visually.

• The attack power of the skelebot dwarf has been thirded, as it was overblown before.
  • So has the attack of the giant amoebas.

• The physical attack of the skelebot giant has been reduced to 2/3 its former value, and its magical attack has been reduced to 1/2 its prior value.

• Added extra spacing between create world and load world, to prevent accidental mis-clicks.

• In recent weeks the collision boxes for some of the spells had gotten a bit wonky. Fixed this up for the fireball, fire touch, circle of fire, seize, tidal pulse, and launched rock.

• All enemies now target NPCs in their chunks with priority over players, since NPCs are the more finite resource.

• Bear traps were not actually triggering because of other collision tweaks in the last few weeks. Completely redid their mechanics, and they now work great.

• The map indicator for the chunk you would be moving to is now a lot smaller and is rotated on its side, so it's more obvious where you are versus where you're going to go if you go through a door.

• Fixed a bug that was letting you still use abilities from the ability bar if your character is dead.

• Put in several preventative measures to prevent the "medusa effect" from creeping in on static skies in some circumstances.

• The black bar denoting the edge of a surface chunk (left or right) is now only half as wide.

• When you have the region or dungeon map up, and you go to the world map or another place it isn't supposed to show, it will still hide itself but it will come back automatically next time you are in a place it should show.

• Vengeful Ghosts can now form a pillaging tactical unit when there are four unaccounted for.

• When a friendly character (player or settlement npc) dies, an event is recorded that reduces morale (multiplies by 0.95, once for each such event) somewhat for 10 turns.

• Removed old pillaging behavior where the pillagers would abstractly kill a random npc each turn they were left on top of the settlement square (plenty of non-abstract killing going on now, once they spawn in the chunk).

Alpha 0.402

(Released September 9th, 2011)

• Lots more work on the citybuilding interface, though it's still not ready for prime-time.

• Lots more character dialogue lines.

• Enemies now have a "capacity cost" attached to themselves, and the monster nests that spawn them now have to keep within a capacity budget. Previously there was just always a flat two monsters per nest that could be spawned, which was problematic with a number of enemy types. Bats, amoebas, and skelebot snipers in particular all spawn far fewer now, and espers spawn several fewer.

• The description text of the warp scrolls has been altered to include: "Visit any guardian stone to be refreshed back up to a minimum of two warp scrolls for free."

• The default controls (and the controls for all existing players so far) have been redefined to have the E key be the confirm/action key instead of the T key, for easier access with WASD players. The R key now cycles inventory bars instead of the E key.

• The minimap scale is now able to be increased all the way to 60, instead of just to 20.

• The default minimap scale is now 15, rather than 1. All existing chosen minimap sizes have been reset to this new default.

• The hopes interface, which is not really ready for prime-time yet, has been disabled. That's something for later into beta.

• The Crestsmith, Spellshaping, and Enchant/Disenchant workbenches will no longer appear until the civilization level reaches 15, 20, and 10, respectively. This keeps the very early game simpler, and honestly most of the advanced functions in these really aren't relevant until later, anyway.

• Fixed bug where mouse-fired abilities could happen from clicking within a gui window (like the messages window in the upper right).

• A new music theme is now available in a lot of the ice age buildings, small town buildings, and so on.

• The magic defense and physical defense stats have been removed from all characters and monsters. This simplifies the character selection process for players, and simplifies the balancing process for enemies. In general this was just complexity that was not positive, as there are more ways to accomplish something similar using abilities and enchants later.

• The stats of all prior characters and monsters from existing savegames have been substantially altered. The balance is hopefully a bit better, but it hasn't been tested a huge amount so feedback is very welcome.
  • This seems to have improved the scaling of stats between levels as well, but we'd definitely like more feedback on that.

• The dynamic skies will no longer go nuts when you first switch regions. They also will transition way more slowly when you move between regions on the world map, too.

• The "Utility" button in the in-game escape menu has been renamed to "Settings" to be more clear as to what it really is.

• Fixed a bug where, on static skies only, sometimes the background wouldn't draw and you'd get a "medusa effect."

• The left and right edges of surface chunks now show a black bar so that you can definitely tell you're getting close to the transition edge. More importantly, it makes it easier to know which way you should run when you enter a chunk from the world map, which was definitely confusing before.

• Any graphics cards that do not support shader model 3.0 will now automatically use static skies, since dynamic skies just draw a pink background on graphics cards tht don't support SM3.

• When the dungeon map has been offset using the shift plus arrow key combination, this offsetting is now remembered until the player goes into a different dungeon. Previously it reset whenever the map was closed, the room was changed, etc, etc.

• The dungeon/region map now does a better job of always disappearing when you go to the world map or the main menu.

• The messages in the upper right of the screen now show for 60 seconds instead of 10, since with just 10 seconds they would often disappear before there was really a chance to read them. Now there is lots of time, but they still don't hang around indefinitely.

• Monster movement speeds are now scaled by the difference between their level and the world civilization level. If they are 1 level higher they move at 80% of their full speed. At two levels higher its 100%. At 3+ levels higher it's 120%. At the same level as you it's 60%. One level less than you is 50%. Two levels less is 40%. Three levels less is 30%.
  • This also applies to monster spells that are cast.
  • All in all this helps with the difficulty tuning, where players who want a slower or faster game can play up or down region levels as appropriate.

• Monsters now grow into existence at a speed based on their movement speeds as per the above change. Monsters are not allowed to fire spells at you while they are in the midst of appearing, which gives you a little more warning time as well.

• Boss monsters now always show their health bar, with the background of it flashing between black and its normal color. This, plus the name of the monster instead of their type being shown above it, should really clear up any confusion about which monsters in a sea of monsters is actually the microboss. With minibosses and up it already wasn't a problem, but microbosses could be really tricky.

• Added in a new monster type: skelebot dwarf.
  • This monster is automatically swapped in for regular skelebots or skelebot snipers in building interiors, since skelebots are too tall to be used indoors (which has always been the intended case, but I never got around to actually doing a smaller enemy for those interiors until now).
  • These use a new skelebot variant of the circle of fire, and some different AI than any of the other existing enemies in order to line up their shots on players.
  • The accuracy of their firing scales with the diffence in levels between them and you.
    • If they are two or more levels higher than the civilization level, they'll pretty much nail you every time you get in their circle's area. If they're the same as your civilization level, they miss more like half the time, but still hit you a fair bit.

• In new settlements, the hearth guardian stone is now placed very near to the world map exit so that players can quickly and easily access it.

• In new settlements, the various workbenches and the covered bridge, aside from the primary three of spellshaping, spellscribing, and outfitter, are all placed near the center of the settlement chunk, rather than at the outside edge. This keeps things cleaner and less overwhelming with them, and clearly differentiates between the primary and secondary groups (and all but two of the secondary group are invisible until you start reaching higher civ levels, anyway).

• The name of the character speaking is now actually shown in their dialogue text, so that you can tell who you are talking to again.
  • This is particularly relevant for identifying what the hearth guardian stone even is, since other things refer to it by name but it wasn't labeled on itself!

• NPCs no longer stop running when they are overlapping another entity with interaction possibilities.
  • This prevents them from making it difficult for you to get into crafting interfaces, etc.

• When NPCs are running, their dialogue prompts no longer flash up as they pass you or you pass them.

• The NPC "stats block" on the strategy and city interface has been simplified; with recent stuff it was getting about a mile high...

• Players are no longer granted any spellscribing profession books right at the start of the game. There is only one spellscribe scroll to unlock as-yet anyhow (the rest all are unlocked from the start), so clearly this is something that players can live without and can go find on their own as they play.

• The profession books are no longer considered commodities, and instead now appear in the main ability bar. This makes them vastly easier to find as well as more convenient to actually use.
  • In addition, their tooltips are now a lot more clear about how to use them, so this really should be vastly more self-explanatory to new players than it was before (it was quite obtuse).
  • And lastly, when the player uses a profession book away from a guardian stone, a message is now shown explaining that they need to be near a guardian stone, and where those can typically be found.

• The old commodity-based profession books now get stripped out of player inventories on world load. However, there is now a new starting windfall at the 0,0 region settlement so that players of existing worlds can get another batch of profession books if they hadn't already used all their existing ones.

• Initial city map size increased from 10x10 to 75x75.
  • Old worlds will not have this updated yet for existing settlements as stuff is still in a lot of flux related to this.

• Trees are now seeded in the city map, and they block the placement of structures. Currently no way to cut them down but that will change.

• City map now has the same scrolling controls as the strategy map (mouse-edge or shift+arrow, ctrl accelerates either).

• All of the commodities now show a description of themselves, as well as their name, inside your commodities inventory.
  • The description explains what the commodity is in general good for, as well as noting where it can be found.
  • This also applies to memory crystals, consciousness shards, and the various crafting materials, of course.

• The various trees that drop things like cedar logs, plums, cherries, and walnuts now have a 100% drop rate rather than a 10% drop rate. It was too annoying the other way.

• Fixed a couple of crash bugs in the tech unlock interface when you open it in certain circumstances and there are no techs left to unlock.

• Can now order an NPC to cut down a tree in city mode (left click orders currently selected npc to cut down tree under cursor). For kicks this gives the settlement stockpile 1 CedarLogs unit.

• Fixed bug in the strategy and city interfaces where the npc list at the bottom of the screen was not being drawn if the selected npc's portrait had not already been requested to load.

• All of the crafting materials shown in the top bar of the crafting interface now also show their full tooltips including data on their name, what they can broadly be used for, where they can generally be found, etc.
  • Additionally, these show information about the tier of the material being looked at (when it has a tier), the quantity held, the quantity already spoken for in this recipe, and information about the fact that the recipe is not yet researched if that is the case.

• The Done buttons in the crafting interface also now include tooltips stating to click those buttons if you're ready to craft.

• Actual error messages are now shown when you choose a recipe that hasn't yet been unlocked, or that you don't have resources for, or that is invalid, etc.

• Added a "What's New? (Web Link)" on the main menu that takes players to the online release notes.